El Mercurio Lies,and La Tercera Lies More. Political Bias in Newspaper Headlines in Chile, 1994–2010

In this article we examine the presence of bias in Chile's two main daily newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercera, both of which have historically been associated with the political right. We analyse their principal headlines in the first 100 days of rule of presidents Eduardo Frei (1994–2000), Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) and Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014). We find that La Tercera was more critical of all these presidents than El Mercurio. In La Tercera we also identify an ideological bias in favour of Piñera as compared to the centre‐left presidents, and in El Mercurio a greater bias against Bachelet than the other presidents.     

Policies for Participation,Life in Association and Confidence,Implications in the Case of Chile

In Chile, the structure of the state has become modernised and decentralised, and the municipalities play an important role in this development. As a result, there are expectations of policies for participation that direct the concerns of citizens with respect to public policies at a local level. Similar to other states in Latin America, Chile enjoys policies that could be perfected in an effort to achieve better integration and synergy among them, especially in the municipalities. This article presents arguments and evidence in the case of Chile in respect of mechanisms of participation, associative life and confidence in the municipalities, as well as proposing ways to perfect public policies for local participation.     

Municipal Governance,Environmental Management and Disaster Risk Reduction in Chile

Given the vulnerability of Latin American countries to extreme events of climatic and geophysical origin and the frequency of these events, how do local governments manage environmental and disaster risk reduction? This article contributes to the Latin American literature about environmental management and disaster risk reduction at the local level. Employing a comparative perspective, the article examines and explains the responses of Chilean municipalities and the role of municipal commitments and social capital.     

Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth: Evidence from Spanish Regions

The degree of fiscal decentralization in Spain is similar to main federal countries and greater than unitary ones. The demand of public sector decentralization is based on a supposed efficiency gains that is far from being obvious. Using a data set for the Spanish regions, we reject the null hypothesis of a significant relationship between growth in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and expenditure distribution among fiscal administrations. Nonetheless, we find empirical support for a relationship between revenue decentralization, far less advanced than the expenditure one, and growth. In both cases we do reject the null hypothesis of a nonlinear linkage between fiscal decentralization and growth in per capita GDP.